


What if, for once, everybody lived?

by fenellaevangela



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 16:31:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6291805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/pseuds/fenellaevangela





	What if, for once, everybody lived?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hhertzof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhertzof/gifts).



Garnet could see the flow of the future branch out before her in many directions like a river, or a tree. There was no one, straight path; there were no certainties. She saw the different paths that reality might follow and tried to decide which was most likely. Where to place her bets. The Crystal Gems had placed their survival in her hands more than once, and been rewarded for that trust every time.

Garnet told Rose that she could see a future without her in bright and vivid colours.

Rose Quartz had fought hard as the leader of a small rebellion against overwhelming odds. She had clawed the Earth out from under Homeworld’s thumb _tooth and nail_ to give humanity a fighting chance, and it was a daunting prospect to . . . not be there to see things through. To risk everything and not be there to take responsibility if the worst happened.

But that was only one branch among a tree of possibilities.

“The biggest branch,” Garnet cautioned. “The one with the most twigs.”

“You’ll have to guide me towards one of the smaller branches, then,” said Rose. It could work without her – it _would_ , if it had to. Rose Quartz was a general who believed in the capabilities of her troops. But she had come too far and done too much to give up the cause just when everything was about to change. “I trust you.”

* * *

Splitting her gem hurt.

Splitting a gem could destroy its ability to project a physical matrix, it could fracture the mind held inside it, it could make the gem inert. Useless, just a rock. Splitting Rose’s gem could have heralded the bleakest, most shrivelled branch of Garnet’s tree, leaving Earth and the Crystal Gems with no Rose Quartz and no one left behind her. 

But it didn’t. Rose gently caressed the perfectly-halved gem nestled in the baby’s soft belly, and smiled.

“Hello, Steven.”

  
  



End file.
